Tag Archives: Dartmouth College

The world of the Massive Open Online Course, better known by the catchy and humorous acronym: MOOC, both fascinates and intrigues me. With 20 plus years as an educator under my belt, I have seen many versions of teaching as it translates from pre-school to higher education and then again from public, charter, private, and even to parochial settings. So the future of how we as educators reach our students has been a thought that wanders in and out of my curious mind on many occasions. I am struck by a comment suggested by Hap Aziz in his article: “Rethinking the Class Paradigm: The Rise and Potential Fall of MOOCs”, posted on February 28, 2012 on this blog. Mr. Aziz states, “Very few educators would argue that there is no difference between teaching cohorts of 20 students or cohorts of 200, 2,000, or even 20,000 students.” I obviously agree with this, but I wonder if we could, as educators, adapt…or better yet…evolve into an instructor capable of reaching and teaching any number of students under our guidance.

Mr. Aziz references Joshua Kim, Director of Learning and Technology for the Master of Health Care Delivery Science program at Dartmouth College, in his article : ”Open Online Courses Are No Substitutes for Classroom Learning” for The U.S. New & World Report. Mr. Kim states, “Authentic learning requires a two-way dialogue between student and instructor. College teaching at its best is much more than the delivery of content: It’s about the co-construction of knowledge with students and faculty…” Kim continues, “Education is one of those things in life (like friendship) that is based on the relationships between individuals, and therefore is limited in how far it can scale.” These concepts absolutely nail it for me. The dialogue between student and instructor and the relationships between the individuals involved in the academic setting has been supporting keystone as I continue to stack the building blocks of my philosophy of education. It is my desire to reach the student, not only through the curriculum, but within and beyond the strength of the relationship we have developed in the realm of a mutual respect and trust.

The respect that should flow between teacher and student allows us to accept that a learned knowledge from the instructor is being properly evaluated, translated and presented to a willing pupil. The trust that must be built in this bond lays on a foundation that should already determine the fact that each participant firmly believes in the ability of the other. The student trusts and respects the knowledge and ability of the instructor. The instructor, in return, should trust and respect the willingness and ability of the student to learn. Now…can we, as instructors, translate this relationship with one student to a larger group? We certainly do this for a class of 20 students, and maybe for a case load of 200 individuals. We do it over a period of time for 2,000 pupils. I believe, that we can build up our academic muscles and reach 20,000 students with the same principals of trust and respect, or by whatever means may work for the individuality of each instructor.

Mr. Aziz is absolutely correct though. To do this, the paradigm needs to shift. I really was sold on his assertion that suggests, “MOOCs are not courses as much as they are communities.” But I fell in love with his concept of,

“…entering into the scale of a small city. And when it comes to a city, we understand that no single person (or even small group of people) is responsible for running the whole city. It’s not just the mayor or the city council members. There are hundreds, and even thousands of other official and semi-official roles to be played in the smooth running of a city: police, firefighters, garbage collectors, teachers, and more with whom I interact as a citizen (student) of my city (MOOC) depending on what kind of assistance I need or interaction I seek.”

YES!!! That is the ticket; a MOOC should be run like a city. All of the individuals involved have roles to play. Aziz paints a world where he speaks of meaningful services meet the needs of the community. He proclaims, “This is where the education community needs to rethink how MOOCs are built and administered, and ultimately what the role of the instructor is to be.” I believe, this proclamation, as illustrated by similar conversations within the academic community, prove that this shift has already been ushered in. We, as the educators of today, and even as the former students of yesterday, have given birth to the needs of the future and the evolving of academia.

“Especially disturbing is that none of the major MOOC providers have hired anyone trained in Instructional design, the learning sciences, educational technology, course design, or other educational specialties to help with the design of their courses. They are hiring a lot of programmers and recruiting a lot of faculty, who may have various motivations for participating in these open education experiments.”

If the shift we are seeing is to make any noise at all, here are the first rumblings to echo throughout the halls of our universities, colleges, school yards and all the way down to the dark corners of the software developer’s office cubicles. Now is the time to look at a blending of our talents. The masses can be reached. We must bring the talents of those in the classrooms, who are designing, implementing and delivering curriculum, together with the genius of those in the Information Technology field who are able to design, implement and deliver the software that will build the “Massively Open Online Communities” that Hap Aziz has envisioned.

Martin LaGrow gives us a wonderful reflection of Mr. Aziz’s thoughts in his response article: “Rethinking the Class Paradigm: MOOCs as a Community,” also for this blog, on March 13, 2013. Mr. LaGrow’s words, “In a sense, the MOOC is a product of evolution.” Jump right up and off of the page and fall straight into my wheelhouse. Yes sir, the MOOC is an evolution. And the MOOC is not finished developing and adapting to the environment that we have built to house it. LaGrow continues to ask, “…how can higher education leverage the strengths of the MOOC without also applying the limitations of the classroom?” I also wonder how this will play out. I already pontificated on my philosophies of respect and trust. Perhaps we should not limit our inquiries to the world of higher education. The proving grounds of today’s collegians fall to the high schools and lower schools that first planted the seeds for the desire to acquire knowledge. These institutions are changing more and more with the explosion of alternative education and the race between public, private, charter, and parochial schools to outdo each other and keep their enrollments up and funding flowing.

In any case, we all must agree, it is a changing world. The way we teach and the way we learn is evolving. MOOCs were only a distant concept just decades ago. They were simply a dream of the Silicon Valley prophets of yesteryear. Today, MOOCs are a reality. Tomorrow, they will be a necessary ingredient in the delivery of a significant variety of knowledge on this planet. It is a testament to Charles Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”. The MOOC that fits- will be the MOOC that survives. Whether it is as a course or a community, that is the question.

There has been quite a bit of attention paid to MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) in the past year; most of it positive, though the criticisms have been getting more exposure recently (check out “When MOOCs melt down” in The Chronicle of Higher Education). The momentum for MOOCs appears to be positive still, with the Horizon Report > 2013 listing MOOCs as one of the game-changing technologies in higher education just around the corner. The chorus of doubts is growing, though, and without some fundamental rethinking of how MOOCs should operate, I might consider myself in that camp of uncertainty. Some of my concerns are regarding the practicality of running MOOCs in the way most likely to yield worthwhile results for the enrolled students–as well as for the organizations or individuals responsible for running them. This entry I posted in December of last year touches on that theme.

The concerns I have, though, aren’t all about practicality; they are also about sustainability and viability of the model. This article from U.S. News published a little over half a year ago leads the reader into the premise that there are differences between traditional online courses and MOOCs (primarily scalability), and it is in these differences that the weaknesses of MOOCs are revealed. The truth is a bit more difficult discern in this case.

Scalability is certainly an issue, even in the traditional classroom teaching and learning environment. Very few educators would argue that there is no difference between teaching cohorts of 20 students or cohorts of 200, 2000, or even 20,000 students. The author of the article (Joshua Kim, Director of Learning and Technology for the Master of Health Care Delivery Science program at Dartmouth College) asserts:

Authentic learning requires a two-way dialogue between student and instructor. College teaching at its best is much more than the delivery of content: It’s about the co-construction of knowledge with students and faculty…

Education is one of those things in life (like friendship) that is based on the relationships between individuals, and therefore is limited in how far it can scale.

The line of reasoning here is that changing the scale of online courses exponentially does not require some fundamental change(s) to the underlying structure of the courses and the relationships within the courses. This isn’t isolated thinking, however. When I attended the ELI Conference in Denver earlier this year, I was quite interested in seeing what other educators were doing in the field of MOOCs so I attended several sessions. Invariably, the sentiment among the presenters was that MOOCs were like super-sized online courses. One phrase that stuck out in my mind was the statement, “when teaching a class of 30,000 students….”

Is there truly a way for a single instructor to teach a class with 30,000 students? Especially if education is based on relationships between individuals?

No, the paradigm needs to shift. MOOCs are not courses so much as they are communities. In fact, if we think of 30,000 or 50,000 or 100,000 students all interacting in a single online community, we realize we are entering into the scale of a small city. And when it comes to a city, we understand that no single person (or even small group of people) is responsible for running the whole city. It’s not just the mayor or the city council members. There are hundreds, and even thousands of other official and semi-official roles to be played in the smooth running of a city: police, firefighters, garbage collectors, teachers, and more with whom I interact as a citizen (student) of my city (MOOC) depending on what kind of assistance I need or interaction I seek.

Running a MOOC should be much more like running a city than running a course. And the citizens of the MOOC all have roles to play in keeping the MOOC running smoothly while providing meaningful and timely services to the other citizens. This is where the education community needs to rethink how MOOCs are built and administered, and ultimately what the role of the instructor is to be. If we develop MOOCs the same way in which we develop smaller online courses with merely a few dozen students, we’ll find that the whole MOOC movement will come crashing down by not being able to meet some very important learner needs.

Earlier this year, Dr. Joshua Kim (Director of Learning and Technology for the Master of Health Care Delivery Science program at Dartmouth College) wrote an article for Inside Higher Ed titled, “Why Every University Does Not Need A MOOC” in which he examined the question of whether or not all higher education institutions should develop MOOCs as part of their teaching and learning portfolio of offerings. The core point of his article is that institutions should not necessarily try to follow the MOOC model as developed by a handful of pioneers. This is a risky endeavor, he reasons, and the key to success is in looking at other models of educational program development. Specifically, Dr. Kim recommends that institutions exercise introspection and examine what unique program offerings they might bring to market in order to appeal to a highly diverse learning community.

The argument has some merit, and indeed we see examples of institutions creating programs that have a “twist” to attract students: Lone Star College’s partnership with the oil and gas industry and the Mississippi Corridor Consortium’s partnership with Toyota for an education-to-work program are just two examples. Certainly, the idea of finding opportunities to engage students in learning that leverages an institution’s own collective expertise and “DNA” is not a new idea… and it is not an idea mutually exclusive to MOOCs, to be offered up in their place. In fact, it isn’t difficult to imagine these innovative programs being offered, at least to some degree, in MOOC format. Where I think Dr. Kim’s argument fails is that he blurs the distinction between program viability and demand as opposed to engaging delivery mechanisms and opportunities. Ideally, institutions should be looking to combine both of these elements.

That is not to say that the use of MOOCs will guarantee any measure of success. This is hardly the case–given the current levels of student preparedness, the revenue models under which different institutions operate, and lack of experience that many (if not most) institutions have in implementing non-traditional modes of online education, developing MOOCs can drain an institution’s resources while driving no change in the status quo of enrollments, retention, and student success.

The question of whether or not to implement MOOCs is preceded by the more basic question: “Under what circumstances can MOOCs thrive at my institution?” This is much more difficult to answer. What are the programs to be considered at MOOC candidates? How do we assess students for enrollment? And perhaps the elephant in the room for many institutions, especially those that are tuition-driven: how do we sustain the model without negatively impacting our revenue? While I cannot offer comprehensive answers (that discussion is just beginning in higher education), I can see some potential pathways for exploration:

We should be looking at MOOCs as a delivery option for large enrollment courses with longer refresh cycles. At least while an institution embarks on the MOOC path, the economy-of-scale issue is a top-of-mind consideration to be addressed. Building MOOCs that will “be around for a while” with less need for revision while help in budgeting, and attaching MOOCs to courses that already may have more faculty (and even instructional design) resources associated with them will be helpful as well.

MOOCs should not necessarily replace traditional on-ground and online courses, but rather they should be offered as a supplemental environment. As an additional learning environment, the existing student support mechanisms can still be utilized, which might mitigate some of the concern over the participation of tech-novice students. And keeping MOOCs associated with course that are funded traditionally is one way of covering their development and maintenance costs.

We should seriously consider collaborative efforts between institutions and team mentorship (not “teaching”!) from an instructor pool. Again, the sharing of resources is a consideration, but a big “win” with this approach is the potential for extending and enhancing the learning community. Ultimately, if we are able to provide more types of support for our students, we widen our pathways to improved student success.

Are MOOCs for everyone? Certainly not, at this point in time. However, taking a measured look at how MOOCs might be integrated into an institution’s existing model of instruction is a conversation that will be coming up more and more in higher education.